Storm over the old mart,

closed these two hours.

Slick on bitumen

reflects eruptive cloud.

After editorial days

I go out for late beer,

admire the frenzied workers.

It is like a military operation,

our vegetable Dunkirk.

Having come from White Horse

or Point Nepean

(‘into the centre from the source’),

they put away their wares

until someone wants:

‘Cheap today, lady, cheap today!’

mere echoes of their taunts.

Forklift trucks flit

from stall to freezer,

bearers of the wilted spring.

Prawns shimmy on old bones

and gulls will have their say.

By the ring-road,

near an old gas stove

in Federation colours, a boy

practises sharp manoeuvres

on a bandaged skateboard.


This poem nods to (and quotes from) Frank Wilmot’s great poem ‘The Victoria Markets Recollected in Tranquility’.